Healthy Hair

Having Healthy Hair

If you want shiny and healthy hair don’t do a thing to your hair. Leave it alone. Almost everything that you do to it can cause some kind of damage. Things that we do everyday like brushing, combing, teasing washing, and even drying with a towel can cause damage to the hair’s cuticle. The more obvious things such as the sun, wind, chlorine, salt water and heat from our blow dryers, straighteners and curling irons can also damage healthy hair. And let’s not forget chemical processing such as perms, chemical straighteners and hair coloring. Harsh chemicals are used in these products that permanently change the structure of our hair, especially affecting it by drying out the outer layer of the hair called the cuticle.

Healthy hair has minimum to no damage to the cuticle layer. The cuticle of the hair is it’s protective layer. It’s job is to protect the inner cortex and protein fibers in the hair shaft. Stripping away the cuticle layers while causing damage leads to split ends, hair weakness causing breakage, frizzy, lifeless, straw-like hair, and certainly not the look I am going for. A flat and healthy hair cuticle is what makes hair shine.

Keeping your Healthy Hair

It’s very important to keep your hair healthy because once it goes bad the only way you can get back that healthy hair is wait for new hair to grow and cut off the damage area. Damage cannot be reversed only covered up with products that can mask the problem, if and only if …it’s minor damage. So let’s look at the things we can do minimize the damage that we do and keep our healthy hair looking it’s best.

Never comb or brush hair when you first come out of the shower. Hair is at it’s most vulnerable state. Instead let your hair air dry first then you can use your fingertips and comb through your hair. If you need to use a comb, use a wide tooth comb.

When drying your hair with a towel, never rub hair together in the towel. Instead you need to squeeze the towel with your hair inside absorbing the water.

Protect your hair from sun and wind damage by limiting the amount of exposure you have to them. A hat with your hair under it is the best protection. Sunscreen also can be effective.

Limit chlorine and salt water on your hair which means the pool and the ocean.

Limit also the heated styling tools such as hair dryer, curling irons and straighteners. When using them, use heat protectant on your hair, never leave heat in one concentrated area on hair, and lower the heat if you can. Also when using heated styling tools always make sure your hair is completely dry or else you can boil your hair.

Limit brushing and backcombing of hair and use gentler brushes made with natural bristles such as boar bristles.

Condition, Condition, and Condition. It has been studied and reported that conditioners do penetrate the hair. They can strengthen the cuticle and protect the hair. So it is imperative with that point alone, you need an effective product to use on your hair to keep it healthy. When the hair dries, it does seal in the moisture which is extremely helpful in giving the appearance of healthy hair. But to repairing and rebuilding the hair after it has been damaged, there is no evidence of this. Conditioning the hair can only help damaged hair look and feel better, but it will not repair the damage that is already done to the hair.

Healthy hair is attainable with care, some change of bad habits and a bit of prevention.